


The Three of Us

by mllevangogh



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 09:05:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3972091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mllevangogh/pseuds/mllevangogh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on this prompt by matymurdok @ Tumblr: the ride we want to go on is three people a cart and we’d rather choose a stranger to sit with than have one chosen for us plus you look relatively not sweaty want to join us” au</p>
<p>Gansey's never been to a carnival. Blue takes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Three of Us

Gansey has never been to the summer carnival, which rolls into Henrietta every year during the first week of June. Blue, by contrast, has gone every year since she can remember and owns dozens of photos of she and Orla as screaming children on the ferris wheel, eating cotton candy, pouring their newly-made sand art into each other’s hair.

The fact that Gansey has never been to something as _quaint_ and _Americana_ as the carnival should be unsurprising to Blue, but she’s horrified nonetheless.

“It’s a _tradition_ ,” she insists to him, hotly. “The Henrietta Carnival is almost a hundred years old. Surely you can appreciate something like that, _Dick_.”

Gansey raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, I’ll go. Wow.”

Blue squints at him, jutting her chin forward. “Did I say I was asking you to go?”

Gansey looks instantly ashamed, turning a delightful shade of pink that makes Blue feel buzzy. “I - you - you were asking me to go, right? I don’t want to presume - I mean, if you would be interested in coming with me, or me - going with you, I’d...you know. Go. ”

Blue smiles nonchalantly. “Yeah. That’d be cool.”

They go.

Blue pointedly does not invite Orla to come with her, both because Orla has never outgrown the desire to pour sand in Blue’s hair as a _very hilarious_ joke, and because Blue isn’t entirely sure if this is a date or not. It seems like it should be a date, what with the late night phone calls and nose-touching and now, as Gansey guides her into the carnival, hand holding, but Blue can never be certain. She’d slipped into something with Gansey as easily as diving into a lake.

_You can’t date him_ , says a voice inside her head. But Blue isn’t sure that’s true. She can’t kiss him, but she can date him, if he even wants to date an unkissable girl. And if this is, you know, dating.

Gansey is delighted by the carnival in an anthropological kind of way. “I’ve never had funnel cake,” he confides to Blue, who rolls her eyes so spectacularly her head hurts afterward. They split one, Gansey carefully dusting the powdered sugar off his seersucker shorts.

“Okay,” says Blue, using her hands to tally, “you’ve been on the ferris wheel, the Gravitron, the Round Up, the Zipper, and the Pirate Ship. You’ve eaten a candy apple and now funnel cake. All that’s left, I guess, is you winning me a giant stuffed animal with your unbelievable Gansey luck.”

Gansey ignores this last bit. “What about that?” he asks, pointing toward the Wheeler, a three-person torture chamber Blue loves. She, Maura, and Orla had ridden it all the time when she was younger. Blue isn’t clear on how the apparatus works, exactly, but there’s spinning and flipping and general dropping up and down.

“Yeah, _o_ kay,” says Blue sarcastically. “Do you really think you’re ready for something as metal as the Wheeler? This is your first carnival.” Gansey opens his mouth to retort, but she cuts him off. “And also, it’s a three person ride. Something about weight or balance or whatever. You need three people in a cart.”

“I’ll answer your question in three parts,” says Gansey. “First, _ouch_. Second, I am perfectly capable of riding the Wheeler. Third, why can’t we just go over there and find someone to ride with us? I’m sure there are people here alone who want to ride.”

It’s a perfectly reasonable suggestion, were they not at a carnival at twilight. Of course Gansey, whom everyone likes and who likes everyone back, would think that finding a complete stranger to ride with them, close-quarters, in a metal cart, would be a good idea.

“Have you seen the people here?” Blue points out. “It’s almost night so all the friendly kids are gone. We’re dealing with mostly weirdos and gross sweaty guys now.”

“I think you’re exaggerating, Blue,” says Gansey, and Blue raises her eyebrows.

“ _I’m_ the one who knows this carnival,” she says.

“Okay, fine,” says Gansey, using his most persuasive voice. “We go over there and try to scout someone to ride with us. If there’s only ‘weirdos and gross sweaty guys,’ we’ll give up, and I’ll not only win you a giant stuffed animal but also buy you an ice cream cone, and you can lord it over me for the rest of the week.”

“Month,” says Blue, “and fine.”

They shake on it.

The line in front of the Wheeler is, as Blue predicted, mostly made up of carnies on their breaks, surly farmers from the surrounding area, and general weirdos. Blue gives Gansey a pointed look.

“Wait,” says Gansey. “What about him?”

‘Him’ is a boy that looks their age but also vastly older, because he looks probably the most tired Blue has never seen another person look. He’s holding three tickets in his hand and nothing else. Even his blinks seem slower, like his body is deciding whether or not to shut down every time he closes his eyes.

“Is he alright?” asks Blue. “He looks kind of - exhausted.”

“But not weird,” says Gansey cheerfully. “Or sweaty or gross.”

Blue groans. “That’s true.”

“So we’ll ask him!” says Gansey, and without waiting for Blue, is striding up to the boy.

“Hi,” says Gansey buoyantly, and the boy looks instantly startled at being spoken to, backing away a few inches by instinct. The boy doesn’t say hi back, but Gansey doesn’t wait for him to.

“My friend and I want to ride the Wheeler and don’t want to be paired with certain - unsavory characters, so we were wondering if you’d like to make a group of three with us.”

“Certain ‘unsavory characters,’” repeats the boy, slowly, and he’s got a musical voice that makes Blue’s heart leap. “Yeah, thanks, pal, for the huge _compliment_ , but a lot of these ‘unsavory characters’ are my neighbors, and I’d prefer not to be trapped in a metal box with a huge prick, even if it is only for five minutes.”

Gansey looks flabbergasted. Blue would find it amusing, except now that she knows Gansey, it’s kind of hard to watch someone react to him the way she’d first reacted to him. She shoves Gansey aside.

“Hi,” she says, breathlessly, and the boy looks at her distrustfully.

“So you’re the friend of Jay Gatsby over here,” says the boy, and Blue laughs.

“Yeah,” she says. “And listen, he’s terrible at first impressions, he implied I was a prostitute - ”

“I did _not_ , we _clarified_ that - ”

“ - but he’s a good person, just really, really, clueless, and we’d like to ride the Wheeler with you, if you’d be into that. If not, we’ll be on our way.”

The boy sizes her up, squinting. “Adam Parrish,” he says, sticking out his hand formally. They’re smudged with a little dirt, a fact he realizes with a blush, wiping his hands on his jeans.

Blue takes it readily. “Blue Sargent, and this is Gansey.”

Adam raises an eyebrow, and Blue sighs. “There’s more to it, but you don’t want to know.”

Gansey waves cheerfully.

“Okay,” says Adam. “Sure.”

They move quickly through the line. When the carnies strap them in, Blue, the lightest of them, sits in the middle with Gansey on her left and Adam on her right. Gansey clenches his jaw.

“Oh my God, you’re scared,” says Blue, and Gansey shakes his head.

“Nope. You wish, Jane.”

“Jane?” interjects Adam from her right.

“Another memento of Gansey’s incompetence and poor sense of humor,” says Blue, and Adam seems satisfied with this explanation.

“Are you scared?” she asks him.

“Hell, no,” says Adam. “I’ve ridden this every year since I was tall enough.”

Blue smiles. She likes the way Adam talks. She likes the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. She likes the dirt on his hands and his jeans and his shoes. She likes how he seems to be a part of this place, just like her.

“Me too,” she tells him.

The cart starts moving.

“Oh, God,” moans Gansey, and Blue crows with laughter.

With the first flip, Gansey seizes her hand in a crushing grip.

With the second, Blue is screaming fanatically, whooping with joy.

By the end, she’s somehow holding both of their hands, all three of them shouting amidst the clank of metal and the cries of the other riders.

When they stumble off after a few insane minutes, Gansey looking delicately green and Adam looking not only fully awake but positively exuberant, Blue is still holding both their hands, linking them together.

She decides, as Adam lets go of her hand hastily and Gansey stops to put his head between his knees, she’d like to continue holding both their hands for the foreseeable future, if they’d let her.

“Hey,” she says to Adam, who is still smiling easily. “What do you know about Welsh kings?”

++++  
  



End file.
